Visitors walk by House Ornament, a 1927 piece by Dick Price owned by the City of Detroit at the Detroit Institute of Arts on Aug. 16, 2013 in Detroit. / Andre J. Jackson/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Detroit’s team of bankruptcy lawyers asked the judge in the city’s bankruptcy case to reject creditor demands for an independent appraisal of the holdings at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

City attorneys Tuesday filed a response to the motion submitted in late November by several of the largest creditors in Detroit’s bankruptcy that asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes to appoint a committee to oversee an independent evaluation of the market value of the multibillion dollar city-owned collection at the DIA. They said the request for an independent evaluation was premature, redundant and a violation of the city’s right to create a plan to restructure the city.

The creditors — including three bond insurers, the city’s largest employee union and several European banks — argued that emergency manager Kevyn Orr was not moving aggressively enough to monetize the art. They also argued that the city, which hired Christie’s auction house, was likely to deliver a low-ball assessment.

The move by creditors took the fight over the DIA into court for the first time and sought to increase pressure on Orr to sell art in order to pay them more of the billions the city owes them.

In Tuesday’s response, however, city lawyers said that the creditors’ motion downplayed the city’s efforts to value the collection and reminded the court that the city has the “exclusive right” to file a plan of adjustment to restructure city finances. The city also said that creditors avoided relying on the nuts-and-bolts of the bankruptcy code because the law “simply does not empower the court” to appoint the committee it demands.

Last week the city released preliminary results of Christie’s evaluation stating that the nearly 2,800 pieces of city-bought art at museum had a fair-market value of between $452 million and $866 million. The Christie’s figures were lower than many expected.

Bankruptcy and art-law experts have told the Free Press that the creditors’ motion was unlikely to prevail.

Orr expects to deliver his plan of adjustment to Rhodes by early January.